What to Eat With Chicken? Depends How You're Cooking It

I've always enjoyed planning dinner. I'm usually mid-breakfast when I start dreaming up a menu, plotting my day around a grocery store trip (hey, when you work at home, you gotta get out of the house somehow). But since my daughter was born eight months ago, I've found that there's never enough time for scheming, and after a rough night's sleep, my mind is often a complete blank. "What goes with chicken?" seems like a silly question, but sometimes it's one that I can't manage to answer. Maybe you've been there.

So I decided to ask our culinary team for some advice. Turns out, while you can eat pretty much anything with chicken, the best options really depend on how you're cooking the bird. As Kenji points out, roasting a chicken means your oven's already on, so it's easy and efficient to prepare side dishes in the oven as well. If you're grilling, you may not want to run back and forth to the kitchen, so it's ideal to prepare a good salad ahead of time. Once you know your chicken-cooking method, coming up with the rest of your menu is pretty straightforward. Now, let's break it down a little.

Let's start with oven-cooked options. Sometimes there's a helpful all-in-one solution, as with these pan-roasted chicken pieces, which come with their own side dish: vegetables that are par-cooked before roasting, so they wind up perfectly tender by the time the chicken is done resting.

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Want to cook the chicken whole? Our butterflied roast chicken cooks in a 500°F oven, and you can make use of the racks that aren't holding your bird for roasting some sides. New potatoes are great candidates for roasting, especially if you boil them a bit first to soften, then stir 'em roughly to increase crispety-crunchety surface area. Prefer russets? Here's our method for the crispiest roast russet potatoes you've ever had.

Looking for something less starchy? Since the chicken takes about 45 minutes in the oven, followed by a quick rest, you can pop these Brussels sprouts on a baking sheet and slide it in the oven in the last 20 minutes or so before the chicken finishes. Keep an eye on doneness—having the sprouts in the oven may increase the cooking time of both dishes a little.

While I've been known to serve a big pan of stuffing with a regular weeknight meal, I tend to gravitate toward lighter bread-based dishes come spring and summer. The Italian bread salad panzanella is a favorite, but if you can't find good tomatoes, try your chicken with this flavor-packed asparagus version instead.

Our juicy, spicy jerk chicken needs something cooling, like buttermilk coleslaw or a bean salad with radicchio and pickled onions. If you want a little white rice on the side, this is the time to get out your rice cooker.

Braised Chicken

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Braised chicken gives you two gifts: the tender meat itself, plus the sauce that simmers around it. I tend to think of the sides primarily as vehicles for that sauce: with coq au vin or this bird braised with cabbage and bacon, for example, you really just want a good loaf of bread, or maybe buttered noodles or mashed potatoes. If you're craving a texture contrast, you could roast your potatoes while the chicken cooks on the stovetop. Serve a simple green salad on the side.

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